New York City filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 31 counties in the state that are blocking, with executive orders, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams from sending migrants to hotels located in those jurisdictions.
According to the city’s Legal Department, the counties’ action is “an illegal practice,” as reported Wednesday at a press conference.
Executive orders issued by counties impose penalties on hotels that agree to receive migrants, whom the city is required to accommodate – like any homeless person – because of a court order issued 40 years ago.
Migrants and homeless
In the lawsuit, the ciudad asks the Manhattan Supreme Court to declare the executive orders null and void and to prevent counties from taking action to enforce them any longer.
“These counties have tried to close their doors instead of assisting the city’s reasonable and lawful efforts to address this crisis. We are asking the court to declare these executive orders null and void, in order to provide refuge to asylum seekers during these unprecedented times,” said legal counsel Sylvia Hinds Radix.
Rejection of the counties
Since August of last year, the flow of migrants has not stopped arriving in New York, saturating the city’s public shelters, which had to resort to renting hotels in the metropolitan area and later others in the north of the state, but It has faced rejection from counties – mostly with Republican mayors – that have resorted to legal actions to refuse to receive migrants.
So far, 74,000 migrants have arrived in the city of which 47,200 are under the care of the city, a figure that increases to 96,600 if the homeless New Yorkers who are also providing shelter are added to them. Both the city and the state have declared an emergency for the flow that has not stopped.
The Legal Department recalls in the lawsuit that the city is sending only a small number of immigrants to those counties and that it is paying the price for those hotels.
They indicate that despite assuming the expenses, the counties have tried to block the city from making the arrangements in their jurisdictions by resorting to multiple methods, such as executive orders, “based on misleading information” that “in some way (hosting migrants) would constitute an emergency that would endanger public safety.”
New York is at maximum capacity
“Since this crisis began, New York City has struggled, virtually on its own, to provide shelter, food, clothing, and other services to asylum seekers arriving in our city. We are doing our part and we will continue to do our part, but we need every locality in the state to do their part as well,” Mayor Adams said in a statement.
He recalled that they have repeatedly said that the shelter system in the city “is at maximum capacity and that we have run out of space.”
“This lawsuit aims to end this xenophobic bigotry and ensure that our state acts as one as we work together to handle this humanitarian crisis fairly and humanely, as we have done from the beginning and as we will continue to do,” he said.
The city this week resorted to an agreement with a total of 50 Protestant churches and some Muslim centers to house single men at night due to the lack of shelters.